Can someone’s opportunities and life outcome be decided from birth? In my life, I was taught a variety of things I had to look forward to because of my gender and race, and most of those things being negative. One of those things I was taught was that for me to be something I couldn’t be “a stigma” and for me to be something I had to get an education, but I was also taught that most of my teachers wouldn’t care and they were only teaching to get paid, which then gave me a lone ranger perspective that was negative and flawed. As time went on teachers showed me that may very well be the case but there were periods in my learning experiences that I was shown just how much a teacher can care.
My first instance of when a teacher showed me I wasn’t in this alone was in 6th grade. I was new to middle school and I had an idea that everything was fast-paced and there would be little to no help, that was until I met my English teacher. My teacher was the type of teacher that you wanted to know because she was a great teacher but also a real teacher. She didn’t pull any punches when editing your paper and she was never afraid to tell you, “this sounds dumb.” But what really made her most memorable is the fact that she acknowledged and introduced us all to the fact that, we were born with odds stacked against us, and as young black learners we were not expected to be much. But she made it very clear to us that no matter what others may expect of you, you have to reach your own heights and defy the normalcies. It was her words and her level of care that set her apart from the other teachers and it let me see that from a young age there is help in education but also if you don’t want what’s best for yourself then you can’t expect to reach new heights.
